NO one but Jimmy and Joan Brown will ever really know what was going through their minds as their livestock went up in flames last night.

However, high on the list of the couple's thoughts must have been: "Why us?"

There was not the slightest evidence that one of their 350 pigs, and handful of cattle and sheep, at Heddon View East farm, in Heddon, Northumberland, was infected.

The livelihood of Mr and Mrs Brown, both in their 60s, both farmers all their working lives, was destroyed because they were neighbours to the land where the foot-and-mouth outbreak is thought to have started.

They were not even spared the grisly sight of the tangled mass of their beasts' bodies being piled ever higher, because the pyre was built on their land.

It could not be constructed on their neighbour's farm, because there was not space.

"They didn't even check our stock," said Mrs Brown.

"They had to burn them because we were next door, and that was that.

"We've lost our livelihood after a long, hard slog during the past 35 years - but not even the Minister for Agriculture Nick Brown can get the facts right.

"He said our farm was infected - well it wasn't."

Mrs Brown, 62, admitted that she and her 65-year-old husband were angry. Yet, it was not an anger that was directed at her neighbours, Ronnie and Bobby Waugh, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, or even fate.

Instead, they said they were angry that they, and the rest of the farming community, would not be left alone to grieve for their industry and their way of life.

The pair went to bed last night with no idea what their future holds.

Mrs Brown said: "We know we've lost our livelihood and we are hoping we might get some compensation, but we don't know.

"All we know is they've got to stop this disease before it does to anybody else what it has done to us."